What fails for you the most?

[larrymoencurly]

Re: What fails for you the most?

I've never had any hard disk that I bought ever fail on me (yet), but I noticed that WD drives show fewer slow sectors than Seagates do:

MHDD results for 2TB drives:

Hitachi 2TB, 5400 RPM, 667GB platters:

< 3ms: 152,86,259
<10ms: 9,735
<50ms: 25,356
<150ms: 334
<500ms: 0
>500ms: 0

Seagate 2TB ST2000DM001, 7200RPM, 1TB platters:

< 3ms: 15,130,905
<10ms: 189,015
<50ms: 376
<150ms: 1,367
<500ms: 1
>500ms: 0

Western Digital 2TB, 5400 RPM, 667GB platters:

< 3ms 14,672,666
<10ms 648,967
<50ms 51
<150ms 0
<500ms 0
>500ms 0

The Seagate 2 TB looks sick.

I got about the same results with another Seagate of the same model but different firmware (CC43 vs. CC47). Also with every brand, the sector numbers changed on each pass, indicating the problem wasn't with the coating on the platters.

[Lobo]

Re: What fails for you the most?

Wow! I was taken aback to see Seagate top the list. The most I've seen were Hitachi/Toshiba followed closely by WD Scorpio Blue/Black.

As a matter of fact, the most reliable drives I've seen were Seagates. I've got old Maxtor (Seagate) IDE drives running great in a couple of rigs right now. No errors at all.

The most fails in the last year or so has hands down been Toshiba. Specifically the laptop drives they make. Pure junk. One little bump and they start to click.

One brand I took a chance on about 5 yrs ago was Samsung. I thought, "well, I've never had to replace one, so maybe they know what they are doing,..." I bought 3, 500 GB drives. So far they have been great. No problems.

[Wester547]

Re: What fails for you the most?

Wow! I was taken aback to see Seagate top the list.

People are probably referencing Seagates after the merger with Maxtor, after which the quality declined significantly (as of the 7200.11 series and thereafter). The older Maxtors would do alright so long as they were kept cool (especially with regard to thermal cycling and the contraction and expansion of the platters leading to significant wear). That goes for every hard drive, not just Maxtor. Samsung drives aren't highly regarded here. They seem to be very sensitive to heat and don't hesitate to fail hard when they do fail (which can be stated of all hard drives, but still), which is often.

Yes, though, it is my opinion as well that Toshiba hard drives are the worst. Very very very very very rarely have I seen one make it a significant length of time and even then that's not without at least some reallocated or pending sectors in tow. I always thought the scratching and ticking noises were a result of the pending and offline uncorrectable sectors, but now I realize it's just because of crap quality...

[Ami Sapphire]

Re: What fails for you the most?

Seagate consumer drives and most definitely Toshiba drives.

My original Toshiba 320GB HDD in my current laptop from 2011 only lasted until August 2013 (too many bad sectors). Had another older Toshiba 40GB laptop drive suddenly die after ~2 years of use as well (2005 - 2007). One interesting exception is the 120GB Toshiba laptop hard drive that was in my sis's old Gateway laptop. That drive was bought in 2008 to replace her dying 100GB Seagate drive. It has gone through heavy use. It was replaced with a 320GB Hitachi drive in 2012 because Sis nearly filled up the drive. As of early 2013, it had no reallocated sectors or any other issues. I no longer have the drive because someone needed a replacement.

I had a small pile of failed Seagate laptop and desktop drives. As follows... Laptop drives: 100GB, 160GB, 200GB. Desktop drives: 4.3GB, 2x 40GB, 500GB. This is 7 failed out of a total 18 I have seen and owned.

That 500GB 7200.10 drive was one of the fastest EIDE drives I had owned.

Seagates are odd. I am using a 250GB laptop drive (it has replaced the failed Toshiba 320GB drive from my laptop) that still only has one reallocated sector despite the fact I dropped that drive three times on separate occasions last year. It still runs well. I also have a 320GB laptop drive that has ~430 reallocated sectors, still running well. And that desktop 250GB Seagate drive that clicks at random. Has been doing so since 2011, and that drive is still running today as a temp secondary drive (still hadn't bothered to replace it).

I have seen very few Western Digital drives fail (3 out of a total 16 I have seen and owned so far), and I have no Maxtors fail yet, interestingly enough (I own six of them). Have two Fujitsu 8GB drives of the same model but different revisions, still runs, but are loud. I have two IBM drives (13.1GB and 61.7GB) and both work well, though the 13.1GB drive has an interesting history. And... a vintage Conner 420GB hard drive, still works well.

[cheapie]

Re: What fails for you the most?

I had a dream last night that my Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 160GB failed (spindle bearing failure), but I woke up to find it still working perfectly.

And... a vintage Conner 420GB hard drive, still works well.

Do you mean 420MB? I don't think Conner ever made anything over a few GB.

[Ami Sapphire]

Re: What fails for you the most?

I had a dream last night that my Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 160GB failed (spindle bearing failure), but I woke up to find it still working perfectly.



Do you mean 420MB? I don't think Conner ever made anything over a few GB.

Yep, I meant 420MB. Really should've gotten some sleep before I wrote that post, lol.

[Wester547]

Re: What fails for you the most?

I had a dream last night that my Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 160GB failed (spindle bearing failure), but I woke up to find it still working perfectly.

I've seen quite a few reports of Seagate Baracuda ATA IV-7200.10 series drives having seized spindle motors... I don't think it's ever happened to me, though, as they are more likely to have a PCB failure (or possibly a head crash and/or too many bad sectors). I believe such a scenario (seized bearings) would more likely be the result of physically mishandling the drive in some way.

Doesn't help that the motherboard it's connected to limits the read/write speeds to UDMA-2.

I know this is stating the obvious, but once you start trying to live with PIO mode, even the lowest DMA mode seems fantastic. :P

[joshnz]

Re: What fails for you the most?

I am quite surprised that Seagate is up there with Toshibia I have run Seagate in all my systems now I run a mix of Seagate and Western Digital.

I have had only one drive fail on my and that was a Seagate laptop drive.

I have pulled many western digital and Seagate drives from laptops and one or 2 from desktops. most of the time it is other brands.

[japlytic]

Re: What fails for you the most?

What about Conner HDDs after Seagate took over Conner Peripherals in 1996?

[spleenharvester]

Re: What fails for you the most?

Polls like these are kinda flawed unless they're expressed as a percentage of drives people have bought, i.e 10 owners / 2 failed.

People might be buying fewer hitachi drives 'cause of their poor rep, so few of them are selecting hitachi of the poll, cause there are fewer of them bought to fail. Whereas a more popular brand will likely have more hits on the poll.

Just putting it out there!

[goontron]

Re: What fails for you the most?

Polls like these are kinda flawed unless they're expressed as a percentage of drives people have bought, i.e 10 owners / 2 failed.

People might be buying fewer hitachi drives 'cause of their poor rep, so few of them are selecting hitachi of the poll, cause there are fewer of them bought to fail. Whereas a more popular brand will likely have more hits on the poll.

Just putting it out there!

this is all taken into account

[ant3202]

Re: What fails for you the most?

seagate ..... my rma list ..... almost seagate
so as the infamous 7200.11

[Mad_Professor]

Re: What fails for you the most?

seagate ..... my rma list ..... almost seagate
so as the infamous 7200.11

I have few of those two, they were notorious and seagate never did get them working right after 13 firmware updates.



It's interesting to see that toshiba and seagate consumer are the highest in the poll.
I guess I need to switch to WD Blacks or SE/RE.

I got another seagate drive in my array mysteriously dropping out at random. I go out and pull the drive, reinsert and checked S.M.A.R.T and it says nothing is wrong. No pending, reallocated, load cycle, temperature, nothing wrong.

I mean look at this shit.

smartctl -a /dev/sdj
smartctl 5.42 2011-10-20 r3458 [x86_64-linux-2.6.32-279.2.1.el6.x86_64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-11 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:   ST3000DM001-9YN166
Serial Number:  W1F0CBT1
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 04578a232
Firmware Version: CC4H
User Capacity:  3,000,592,982,016 bytes [3.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:   512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Device is:    Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:  8
ATA Standard is: ATA-8-ACS revision 4
Local Time is:  Wed Oct 30 12:18:45 2013 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
                    was never started.
                    Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:   (  0) The previous self-test routine completed
                    without error or no self-test has ever
                    been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:        ( 575) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:          (0x73) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                    Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                    Suspend Offline collection upon new
                    command.
                    No Offline surface scan supported.
                    Self-test supported.
                    Conveyance Self-test supported.
                    Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:      (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                    power-saving mode.
                    Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:    (0x01) Error logging supported.
                    General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:    (  1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:    ( 255) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:    (  2) minutes.
SCT capabilities:       (0x3085) SCT Status supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME     FLAG   VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE   UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate   0x000f  118  099  006  Pre-fail Always    -    197704424
 3 Spin_Up_Time      0x0003  092  092  000  Pre-fail Always    -    0
 4 Start_Stop_Count    0x0032  100  100  020  Old_age  Always    -    43
 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct  0x0033  100  100  036  Pre-fail Always    -    0
 7 Seek_Error_Rate     0x000f  068  060  030  Pre-fail Always    -    43012730643
 9 Power_On_Hours     0x0032  087  087  000  Old_age  Always    -    11792
 10 Spin_Retry_Count    0x0013  100  100  097  Pre-fail Always    -    0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count    0x0032  100  100  020  Old_age  Always    -    42
183 Runtime_Bad_Block    0x0032  100  100  000  Old_age  Always    -    0
184 End-to-End_Error    0x0032  100  100  099  Old_age  Always    -    0
187 Reported_Uncorrect   0x0032  087  087  000  Old_age  Always    -    13
188 Command_Timeout     0x0032  100  097  000  Old_age  Always    -    34360393740
189 High_Fly_Writes     0x003a  098  098  000  Old_age  Always    -    2
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022  065  049  045  Old_age  Always    -    35 (Min/Max 35/44)
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate   0x0032  100  100  000  Old_age  Always    -    0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032  100  100  000  Old_age  Always    -    41
193 Load_Cycle_Count    0x0032  091  091  000  Old_age  Always    -    18574
194 Temperature_Celsius   0x0022  035  051  000  Old_age  Always    -    35 (0 25 0 0 0)
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012  100  001  000  Old_age  Always    -    0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable  0x0010  100  001  000  Old_age  Offline   -    0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count  0x003e  200  200  000  Old_age  Always    -    0
240 Head_Flying_Hours    0x0000  100  253  000  Old_age  Offline   -    160219460011434
241 Total_LBAs_Written   0x0000  100  253  000  Old_age  Offline   -    195317536594564
242 Total_LBAs_Read     0x0000  100  253  000  Old_age  Offline   -    48692617989423

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description  Status         Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline    Completed without error    00%   11747     -
# 2 Short offline    Completed without error    00%   11747     -
# 3 Short offline    Completed without error    00%    15     -
# 4 Extended offline  Completed without error    00%    14     -
# 5 Short offline    Completed without error    00%     6     -
# 6 Short offline    Aborted by host        90%     6     -
# 7 Short offline    Completed without error    00%     4     -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
  1    0    0 Not_testing
  2    0    0 Not_testing
  3    0    0 Not_testing
  4    0    0 Not_testing
  5    0    0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
 After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

[eccerr0r]

Re: What fails for you the most?

Dead HDDs I've had that I can recall:

40MB WD (user error) Mounted in orientation not allowed in owners manual
260MB seagate (old age, user error)
340MB seagate (user error) Used bad PSU to kill
400MB maxtor (user error)
850MB maxtor (seller user error) Seller dropped disk, got replacement
6.4GB maxtor (possibly user error) Used bad PSU to kill
13.7GB Fujitsu (unknown)
20GB IBM Travelstar (system design error) overheated
30GB quantum (assembly defect) bearing failure
60GB WD (old age?) very flaky behavior
120GB maxtor (assembly defect) immense bad sectors
500GB hitachi (assembly defect) Sudden death
500GB enterprise hitachi (may be user error, unknown) Overheated

Though I have a lot of dead hitachi and maxtor disks, I have a lot of those disks too, so it's skewed.

The "assembly defect" drives I ended up getting replacements from the manufacturer, and these disks have been fine.

The "user error" tends to be due to me handling the disks. Hard drives tend to be a lot more sensitive than one thinks, banging them against each other or another hard surface can cause premature failure. I've started to gently handle disks and they've started lasting a lot longer.

I have had a lot disks with only a handful of bad sectors that I didn't count as failures.
Also I have started to get disks that conk out due to ... bad cabling... who would have thought...

[shadow]

Re: What fails for you the most?

Today just saw a dead Toshiba laptop drive. *sigh*

[Pentium4]

Re: What fails for you the most?

I forgot to mention how many Seagate Barracuda ES2 drives I've seen fail. The place I work at sold 128 ES2's in a 2 year span (2008-2009) After 3 years (2012), we had a failure rate of 78% That's pretty bad. The regular ES drives after 3 years only had a failure rate of 5%

[Wester547]

Re: What fails for you the most?

I have few of those two, they were notorious and seagate never did get them working right after 13 firmware updates.



It's interesting to see that toshiba and seagate consumer are the highest in the poll.
I guess I need to switch to WD Blacks or SE/RE.

I got another seagate drive in my array mysteriously dropping out at random. I go out and pull the drive, reinsert and checked S.M.A.R.T and it says nothing is wrong. No pending, reallocated, load cycle, temperature, nothing wrong.

I mean look at this shit.

Could as well be a PCB failure, something S.M.A.R.T. wouldn't pick up. S.M.A.R.T. only seems to detect cable, interface, and platter errors of a very arbitrary kind (though it does help to check the S.M.A.R.T. log for read/write errors or cabling errors that have been reported, which is separate from the S.M.A.R.T. data itself). S.M.A.R.T. is still better than nothing.

[cheapie]

Re: What fails for you the most?

Could as well be a PCB failure, something S.M.A.R.T. wouldn't pick up. S.M.A.R.T. only seems to detect cable, interface, and platter errors of a very arbitrary kind (though it does help to check the S.M.A.R.T. log for read/write errors or cabling errors that have been reported, which is separate from the S.M.A.R.T. data itself). S.M.A.R.T. is still better than nothing.

One time, I had S.M.A.R.T. detect a failure about two years before the drive actually died...

[Hondaman]

Re: What fails for you the most?

Taking a cue from spleenharvester, I've used probably a dozen hard drives, probably only 4 or 5 for operating systems (first PC was April 1992). Two have died. The Maxtor 7546A* (546 MB IDE), no recovery attempted. The other was a Seagate 2.5 GB IDE. It ran rather hot. Head crashed after 2 years 11 months, 11 months past the warranty. Ontrack recovery got most of it back (and I got a $1,500 bill).

My backup plan since has been "lots of duplicate files all over 6-8 other HDs", but I'm going to streamline things soon. I'll put everything on 2 drives (one FAT32, one NTFS or EXT4). Using "ls -oG" for each partition to get a text file of all the crap I've got, then deleting dupes. Then copying to the "master backup" drives. Maybe the FAT32 drive (or maybe both) will have backup copies. My data is not extensive.

It's hard when you don't have a machine that can handle both EIDE and SATA.

* The Maxtor was a tough loss, I had a nice Corel Draw diagram I made for a report in accounting class (today I only have a color transparency of it printed by an inkjet). I guess I could reproduce it with Corel Draw on a Win98 machine, but when can I find the time?

[shovenose]

Re: What fails for you the most?

WD Blue and Black are the most reliable. WD Green are mediocre. Seagate is somewhere in between. Toshiba are pretty had. Shitachi is the worst. Samsung? Near Seagate or Toshiba I'd say.

WD RE4 drives are the best IMO but that doesn't count against all of the consumer drives.